The race for the 2020 presidential election is well underway. Ten candidates took the stage in Miami on Wednesday night for the first round of the Democratic debates. While the candidates wrangled their thoughts and policy positions, news outlets were hard at work capturing every interesting comment and meme-able reaction. Here are some impactful live-tweeting strategies the SnapStream team saw some of our media customers use Wednesday night.

Let One Reporter Take Over Your Twitter Account

BuzzFeed News streamlined its live-tweeting of the first round of Democratic Debates by letting reporter Ryan Brooks, who covers the Democrats, take over its Twitter account. Brooks quickly delivered some great content to the 1.3 million Twitter accounts that follow BuzzFeed News.

When Beto O’Rourke started speaking Spanish to answer his first question, many people noticed Cory Booker’s reaction. The Daily Show instantly grabbed the perfect image of the moment, added a hilarious caption, and put it on Twitter. The post has been liked more than 60,000 times, and retweeted more than 11,000 times.

Politico also tweeted about O’Rourke speaking Spanish for part of his first response. But rather than focusing on Booker’s reaction, the organization took a different approach. It tweeted out a video clip of the moment, and added quotes from two of its staff members above the video. Politico’s Twitter followers not only got to immediately watch the scene on their devices, but they also got to read two very different takes on it. The video has gotten over 35,000 views.

Thoughts on Beto O'Rourke answering his first question tonight partly in Spanish:

Examining the current state of local TV news, we notice two trends. 1.) Local TV viewership is declining, and 2.) About 6 in 10 Americans get their local news from social media.

How can local TV news position itself in this future of digital media? To answer this, we take a look at this changing landscape and into how local TV news stations are keeping audiences engaged on Twitter & Facebook. Read more

With Thanksgiving this week, we're thinking about all of the ways that SnapStream customers are simply the best. To thank you for being so amazing, we're giving out "SnapStream: Made in Techxas" t-shirts (read below to find out how to get yours).

You are smart AND creative

You have been doing amazing things with SnapStream, things we never even considered. Examples of ingenuity with SnapStream:

Emerson College is doing analyzing broadcast journalism through media research and content analysis with SnapStream

The folks at NBCUniversal are using SnapStream across the board, taking fan engagement to another level with shows like Maury, E! News, Bravo, Dancing with the Stars, etc.

How are you using SnapStream? We love to hear about what you're working on!

You are helping us evolve

So many of the new features in SnapStream are inspired by you. You request it, we make it happen. You are continuing to help us evolve as a company and we can't thank you enough. Check out the latest features inspired by you in SnapStream 8.0.

You're leading the pack

Keeping conversations real-time on Twitter and Facebook can be difficult to manage, but you're pulling it off. Customers like:

Happy Thanksgiving from SnapStream

If you're not following The Maury Show on Twitter, you're missing out on some quality entertainment. The show has been around since 1991, and just aired it's 3,000th episode. The success of The Maury Show isn't waning anytime soon as they continue to make strides via social media and fan engagement.

Paul Faulhaber is the executive producer of The Maury Show and realizes the importance of social media in the daytime television landscape. He decided to bring in Snapstream as a tool for the digital producers, Eric Hanson and Kristin Scheele, to grow the social media presence of The Maury Show.

Kristin and Eric spoke with us about how The Maury Show is harnessing the passion of their fans to deliver real-time engagement

Q:Can you tell me a little about your role at NBCUniversal?

Kristin: I am a field producer and one of the digital producers. Eric is the head person and I help him create original content for our different social platforms. I do a lot of behind the scenes shooting during tape days and create original content with that. I also helping with the daily social posts, whether it's grabbing funny moments off of SnapStream and posting them or creating GIFs, memes, things like that.

Eric: My role is to take the content from the show and bring it to the second and third screen. Taking what the viewers experience in live TV and putting it on social. Allowing the viewers another way to experience the show.

"My role is to take the content from the show and bring it to the second and third screen... Allowing the viewers another way to experience the show."

- Eric, Producer, The Maury Show

Q:How did SnapStream get implemented at The Maury Show?

Eric: Paul Faulhaber, the Executive Producer of Maury, was instrumental in incorporating SnapStream into the show. Paul gets social media and the value it adds to our show. When he first introduced us to SnapStream we were sold.

Kristin: Paul was so excited about Snapstream, it was contagious. We were fired up and couldn’t wait to incorporate it into our workflow.Q:What does your social workflow look like?

Eric: We're kind of like a big "think tank". We throw out ideas, between the whole staff. We actively encourage everyone from the producers to the interns and the office managers to help us come up with ideas on what to post. But ultimately, I decide with our Executive Producer, Paul Faulhaber, how and when we'll encorporate that into our platform.

Q:How does SnapStream fit into this workflow?

Kristin: Over the summer, every day we would do a live chat on Twitter which we used SnapStream for. We would pull stills from the show, creating GIFs, using the live Twitter feed.

SnapStream is a valuable tool for us. We have three other shows in Stamford (where we're located) and they can't wait to start using it as well. We (The Maury Show) has been used a guinea pig, but it's gone so well.

Q:What other aspects/features of SnapStream do you find the most useful for Maury?

Kristin: One of the other major things that we do is put clips directly onto our Facebook page from SnapStream. It's great that SnapStream includes the closed captioning, native in the video.

We also have an agreement with Amazon Fire, so we upload clips from SnapStream into YouTube, and that aggregates directly to our Amazon Fire account.

Eric: SnapStream has been really wonderful because we incorporate anything we want to use in our social workflow. It also allows us to stay really engaged with our fans. Content is king, and our viewers want new content, fresh content. We may be airing back episodes, but we can still create fresh social content with those episodes.

Kristin: The search function has really been helpful. We're starting "Out of Control Teen Tuesday" this week. Now that we have a backlog of Maury shows built up in the SnapStream library, we can go in there and do a search for "out of control teens". We can see every show that we've done that includes that search term and post it directly to our social media platforms.

We have a lot of moving parts here, and everyone is so busy. So instead of having to ask other producers or managers to go search for a clip, we can just do a quick search in SnapStream, grab it and share it.

Eric: Another thing that we do with SnapStream is grab stills from the platform and use them in our weekly "caption this" contest.

Eric: It was very cumbersome. We'd have to have someone go to the editing bay, mark clips, have them pulled. Then we wait 24-48 hours to have someone pull them, mark them and send them to us.

Now, as I watch the show, I'm pulling and archiving clips, deciding when and where I can use them. A lot of people are incredibly thankful for SnapStream, because it makes our jobs so much easier.

"We were able to go into SnapStream to find all the clips of Searcy and pull those. We can continue the conversation, adding more content to fuel the fire."

- Eric, Producer, The Maury Show

Q: Can you think of any particular posting or episode where SnapStream was instrumental?

Eric: We just celebrated our 3,000th episode, so we played a lot of Maury's favorite episodes and guests through the years. We would pull those directly from SnapStream and share via social.

A lot of times when something goes viral, it's not always because of us. For instance, a reddit user said one of our guests looked like Ted Cruz. So, we were able to go into SnapStream to find all the clips of Searcy and pull those. We can continue the conversation, adding more content to fuel the fire.

Kristin: We love seeing how creative people can be with our clips.

Eric: Since we've introduced SnapStream into our platforms, it's really revitalized our social presence. It really makes us stand out in comparison to other shows. We have this immediacy that sometimes other shows lack.

It's nice to have a library, or an archive of our shows. Sometimes something will go viral that we didn't even think about. A lot of times, you just don't know what is going to hit. Now we can go back in and add that extra content to the conversation, engaging with our followers and our fans.

"Since we've introduced SnapStream into our platforms, it's really revitalized our social presence. It really makes us stand out in comparison to other shows."

NBCUniversal is one of the longest running users of SnapStream. From “The Soup” to E! News, they’ve got every SnapStream use case covered. The man behind it all, the pulse of SnapStream at NBCUniversal is Stefan Lysenko. His role was created to manage SnapStream, so he knows the platform in and out, backward and forward. He spoke with us and shared some of his workflows and tips for managing the platform and how SnapStream, and his role, have changed over the years.

Stefan is a unique customer for SnapStream. He manages requests from ALL shows or departments at NBCUniversal (E! News, Bravo, Access Hollywood, E! Online, E! News Now) and uses SnapStream to record, clip and share. NBCUniversal has one of the largest SnapStream setups with 50 channels being recorded simultaneously, 12 shows/teams using the platform and 9TB of storage per tuner card. It's a monster setup.

Q: Tell me about your role at NBC Universal?

Stefan:I manage SnapStream at NBC Universal as I am the main contact overseeing the platform. Everyone will tap me first to find a solution to address the current challenge, issue or question for TV recordings. As far as maintenance, I handle all the conflicts. We can record 50 things simultaneously, so I manage the priority list to make sure everyone gets their needs met.

We also have a backup TV tuner, to ensure we don’t miss any recordings. I’ve developed a “hunch” recording. Because we have the ability to record so many things, sometimes I can take a look and think, “someone is going to want that”. I get plenty of requests from people that may have missed a recording and they’re double checking with me to see if I happened to grab it. When things go wrong, if there’s a bad tuner, etc. I’m the first one to address the issue, and get one of our engineering team members to address the issue. At the same time, I’m trying to find a way to get our production team the show they need. So, that’s when I may tap into the backup server.

Q: Do all of the shows under NBCUniversal that use SnapStream go through you?

Stefan: Exactly, my role was has been created around this. We’ve been a SnapStream customer since it’s infancy, and you’ve all done so much to expand and evolve the platform. Our SnapStream use has really broadened over the years.

Some of the NBC groups using SnapStream have very unique tastes and needs. For instance, “The Soup” focused on clipping really odd moments in television and pop culture with commentary by a comedian (Joel McHale). They had PA (production assistant) scouring all these odd cable shows, finding these wacky things, using that to build the show. Whereas, E! News is very traditional.

Our entire SnapStream user base is very diverse, there are so many different uses. We have some groups that are recording things just to see the commercials.

“We’ve been a SnapStream customer since it’s infancy, and you’ve all done so much to expand and evolve the platform. Our SnapStream use has really broadened over the years."

Q: Can you walk me through your SnapStream workflow?

Stefan: And now to our workflow..! We've been able to manage our SnapStream workflow with only one full-time employee (myself).

When new users are added, they are logged into the SnapStream system and given a small welcome packet outlining the SnapStream tools and details along with the SnapStream login link used for access.

TV show searching and clipping details are outlined for our new users and the new social media tools are highlighted since they are powerful, seldom used tools that SnapStream has recently added to their software. New users are given a SnapStream TV show recording request link/template, so that they can request recordings directly through our team. Last but not least, new users are added to our SnapStream group email list so that all users can be notified and updated with one single email contact, while they're also given a SnapStream Operational group email address that accesses our core team directly (including SnapStream engineering) in times of important needs.

Q: How has SnapStream impacted the workflow at NBC Universal? Did it replace another system, or did SnapStream open up an entirely new department?

Stefan: We’ve used SnapStream from the beginning. When SnapStream came out with the most current version, our department leaders asked me to research similar companies to find a comparable solution before our upgrade. I tried, but I came back and said “I suggest we stick with SnapStream”.

Q: Which shows are using SnapStream the most, which ones are seeing the most success with the platform?

Stefan: When it was on-air, The Soup was a huge user of SnapStream.

Currently, our biggest user is E! News. On a consistent daily basis, E! News is clipping off segments or scenes from such shows as Live with Kelly, The Voice, The Today Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Good Morning America and Dancing with the Stars to name a few. Those clips are then inserted into packages and edits that run on-air. For example, Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets segment would be clipped off in order to air on E! News. Or when Kelly Ripa returned to work from being away after Michael Strahan’s announcement – her first day back & monologue was clipped off and edited into a package that aired on E! News.

On the Digital side we’re doing a lot of the same work. On Tuesday night for example when the two Dancing with the Stars “Pros” got engaged, E! Online editors clipped that segment and posted it on our site along with a write up of what happened on set.

As a social posting, we'll pull Live from the Red Carpet or during an actual award show. Social would grab the moment off the Oscar’s telecast where Jennifer Lawrence fell going up the stairs to accept her award and would create a GIF on our pages at that moment after it happened.

Bravo is a big user for monitoring their own shows. They aren’t building a show with it, but they’re using it in their broadcasts.

Q: Is there one aspect of SnapStream you see as particularly beneficial to your organization? One feature you couldn’t live without?

Stefan: We’re in a phase with our user groups being so traditional. They really been sticking with the key features of SnapStream, recording and clipping. One thing I believe to be underused is the social media aspect. Sharing clips to Twitter and Facebook. There’s so much that can be done there, you could really have just one person dedicated to the social media aspect of SnapStream.

The team at SnapStream has been incredibly helpful and supportive of us, they have our back. And I enjoy pleasing our users. When you get that appreciation from your users and the support from the SnapStream team, it’s just icing on the cake.

Started in 2005 as a print publication, TheWashington Examiner is today one of our most active social customers. They're dedicated to engaging readers by bringing them the latest in breaking news and politics.

One of the driving forces behind this engagement is Sean Langille (fun fact about Sean, he started writing for his city newspaper when he was in 2nd grade). He was nice enough to chat with us about best practices for social engagement and what life was like before SnapStream.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your role at the Washington Examiner?

Sean: I have the title of Digital Engagement Editor, so I work a lot with social media and different ways to digitally market our product. But I also work with vendors to find ways that we can enhance our product. Part of my job is helping to drive digital strategy in Facebook and Twitter and our multi-media content, working with interns to help curate that content.

Q: What is your thought-process behind portraying a visual strategy?

Sean: When we tell a story we try to move beyond just using the text. It’s about using infographics, photos and videos. For instance, just now I was using SnapStream to clip the president saying that Donald Trump was “unfit and woefully unprepared”. We understand that people are going to read text, but we have to offer our audience infographics, imagery and video elements. If they can click through and watch a video of Obama saying the quote, then it provides a much stronger presentation.

"When we tell a story we try to move beyond just using the text. It’s about using infographics, photos and videos".

Q: Can you tell me how you and your team are using SnapStream? How do you find that it is most effective?

Sean: The way it usually works is that we have interns help us use SnapStream. Usually myself and the other digital editor will watch videos and speeches and we’ll call out to the interns and say “hey, Obama said this…”. When we’re at the conventions and there are speakers, we’ll all be monitoring it. We actually have a dedicated "Slack" channel that is actually called “SnapStream”, and we can post in there “hey, so-and-so said this, who can grab it?”. The interns cut that up, and then I go through that in the library and further fine-tune it. From there, we put it out to Twitter or Facebook, using "ShowSqueeze" to put it out to Facebook.

We use a social distribution platform called “SocialFlow”, so sometimes we’ll do a combination of directly publishing from SnapStream or sometimes we’ll put it directly into SocialFlow to best optimize when that video should go out. We’d love to see an option to recycle from within SnapStream (UPDATE! This functionality is now available in SnapStream 7.2). For instance, we had one yesterday… Pat Smith was on CNN and we tweeted it out and got 300+ retweets with just that video. We know that kind of content is popular with our audience so it would be great if we had a way to re-package that.

"Now that we have SnapStream, within minutes or seconds of someone saying something newsworthy, we can get that out and be ahead of our competition".

Sean: Prior to SnapStream, during a debate or big event night, we would know when these videos happen so we’d be clipping off of some live stream, literally screen grabbing and then getting it to our video team and then have to wait for editing to push that out.

Now that we have SnapStream, within minutes or seconds of someone saying something newsworthy, we can get that out and be ahead of our competition. If we’re the first one to it, then it takes off. It’s something as simple as Trey Gowdy on "Meet the Press" saying “I endorse Donald Trump”, we take that phrase, put it out there and we’re one of the first. With the amount of social engagement it can drive… I don’t think we could live without it.

Q: Can you tell me about the team workflow?

Sean: Myself and my digital editor will tell the interns about someone being on tv, or a speech, or event. We’ll have interns monitoring these events, and we’ll notice certain soundbites, telling them to pay attention to when a particular person speaks, or to look out for certain terms. What we usually have them do is pay attention to the newsmakers or the broader bites. But with their own initiative, they’re able to look at more content and ask us what we think of additional items.

Sometimes it’s not about what is being said, but physical reactions. People make weird faces, or we’ll catch interesting things like when CSPAN flashed WikiLeaks during Hillary Clinton’s speech. So we’re able to go back into these clips and create GIFs to capture these interesting little moments… like when we captured Hillary Clinton’s weird reaction to fireworks.

Q: How do you manage the timing of social posts? Social happens in an instant, how do you make sure that you’re heard?

Sean: It’s about staying in time, but sometimes offering a little bit different. Can we capture the side that no one else is looking at, getting the contrarian viewpoint. Showing the different sides of the story and not just the one that is popular.

Q: How are you using this for conventions?

Sean: We have setup VPNs, so that people can log into SnapStream wherever they are. This is what we did at the conventions. Overall, things were functioning well and we were able to log in and clip things, as well as coordinate with the interns back in DC.

Q: So, you being away from the office isn’t constricting your ability to post videos and GIFs on Twitter and Facebook?

Sean: No, not at all.

"We’re using SnapStream to transform the way we do social".

Q: How are you framing the conversation, how are you getting the best reactions?

Sean: It’s about keeping track of what everyone else is doing. We use a lot of listening tools to see what the competition is doing. But we’re trying to advance the story. There is the story of Trump fighting with the Kahn family, as compared to the woman who lost her son in Benghazi speaking at the Republican National Convention. We wanted to see what the reaction was to the media coverage of both, and we were one of the few that was using SnapStream to put those videos out there. It’s about being aware of the storyline that everyone else is doing, but what are the other emerging storylines coming out of this.

Sometimes it’s about going beyond the other clips that everyone else is putting out. We want to be thought of as a place where you know you can go to get a good snapshot of what was said at the conventions. Essentially, you have a highlight reel of what everyone said. If you look through our Twitter stream and what we did on Facebook during the convention, we put out 100’s of SnapStream videos, using it as a tool for engagement.

Q: Why is this something that you are passionate about, where did this need to “show both sides” come from?

Sean: I have always been of the mindset that everyone else is covering it the same way, let’s advance the story and see what the other voices are. There are so many voices saying the same thing that in order to differentiate yourself, you have to find ways and find the content that will balance that out. But also, there are stories that will get buried because people are so wrapped up talking about one thing.

What I’m most passionate about is telling the story well. You have to have all the elements to do that, whether it’s infographics, video… because news now isn’t just text. When you click on a news story, what’s going to keep you on the page the longest? We want to establish ourselves as an authority for a certain kind of content. So that if you want this kind of content, we are where you go.

Q: Thank you so much for speaking with me Sean, is there anything else you wanted to add or talk about before we wrap up?

Sean: We’re using SnapStream to transform the way we do social. We’re trying to reach a society that’s a little bit ADD, and entice them to actually read a news story. I think the larger story is how news outlets are using every tool at their disposal, especially SnapStream, to make sure that news as a written medium doesn’t die.

About Sean Langille

Sean Langille is Digital Engagement Editor for the Washington Examiner. He also serves as an associate producer for Fox News Channel, where he aided in the launch of the Fox News First daily political email newsletter. Sean also has an extensive radio background having produced "The Laura Ingraham Show" and working as an on-air host in Virginia and Massachusetts.

It’s time to put the old, laborious ways back on the bench, bring SnapStream into the game, and give fans the play-by-play posts they deserve. Social media connects fans with their favorite teams, but sharing action-packed visual content used to be a taxing process—long wait times, screenshots, numerous uploads and downloads.

Matt Gardner, Senior Director of Promotions and Digital Strategy for the St. Louis Blues Hockey Club, oversees a team of digital strategists that are leading the NHL in providing a comprehensive digital experience for their fans. At the beginning of the 2015-2016 season, Matt and his team began looking for a digital solution that was as user friendly and as real-time as possible.

Their previous solution to share content to their main social media accounts, Facebook and Twitter, took too long to deliver content and required long waits and tedious edits. Clips of the Blues’ big goals, incredible passes and huge saves by their goalies could take up to 20 minutes to become available to the digital media team, if at all.

The Blues found their solution in SnapStream. SnapStream provides a real-time solution for the team, and allows them to clip any and all moments they want to share with their fans quickly and easily. “The turnaround time is now seconds,” said Gardner. “We see it live and we immediately jump into SnapStream. It goes straight to Twitter from there in seconds.” With SnapStream, goals can happen in real time, and a GIF, image, or video clip of the goal can be posted natively to social media, almost instantaneously.

Whether the Blues are at the Scottrade Center or on the road, all of the video feeds important to the digital media team are now accessible through SnapStream. Even the in-stadium feed can be accessed, allowing the digital team to share fun moments like the Kiss-Cam and overhead shots of the beginning puck drop.

As the Blues continue into the 2016 post-season, their innovative digital strategy team continues to recognize that SnapStream is a powerful tool for keeping their fans engaged on social media. Now, fans can feel the real-time rush of the game at their desk or on their mobile device. And, the digital team has more time to interact with fans, making them a larger part of the game and a vital part of the experience.

The 2016 presidential election cycle has been as unpredictable as any election in recent memory with over 20 sanctioned debates, numerous “town hall” discussions and countless candidate speeches. News organizations have been overwhelmed with an unprecedented volume of visual content to share with their viewers.

While debates have been broadcast on television since 1960 (the famous Kennedy-Nixon debates), there has been a seismic shift in the way the presidential debates have been covered in the media this election cycle. The New York Times said it best: political GIFs have become the new sound bites of the 2016 campaign season.

Animated GIFs have been synonymous with coverage of the 2016 presidential race. Whether it is Donald Trump making exasperated faces at his opponents or Hillary Clinton seemingly wiping dirt “off her shoulder,” these instantly shareable bite-sized moments have helped amplify and focus attention on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates running.

Live-tweeting of this election cycle has made it easier than ever to follow along with candidate events in near-real time. It also allows the organizations sharing the content to frame the conversation in the language of the social network on which it is being shared.

Savvy media and political organizations have jumped on the GIF bandwagon and are sharing moments from the debates and other election events, creating incredibly engaging and viral content while informing their readers about the candidates and issues.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, an animated GIF could fill a volume!

I’ll have to admit, I don’t follow “NBA Twitter” that often. I should since I work for a company that enables sports and news organizations to post TV clips and GIFS to social media. But with the All-Star game around the corner, it had me thinking, “am I missing out on anything?” A New Republic article talked about how Twitter has changed the way we watch the NBA, so I decided to see what all the fuss was and experience it for myself. That night, not only did I watch, what many have called, “the best dunk contest of all time” but I was even more entertained by everyone’s online reactions.

NBA Twitter was in a frenzy and I was happy to now be a part of it. Move over Dominique Wilkins, the new "human highlight reel" is NBA Twitter.